The chart below details the percentage of schools by their start times as of 2015-16:

While fewer than 1 in 4 elementary schools started before 8 a.m., nearly half of high schools did so.

The federal data show traditional and charter schools had roughly similar start times, but urban and suburban schools tended to start earlier than more rural campuses, and schools with few poor students were the most likely to start by 8:30 a.m. or later.

In Iowa, the Charles City Community School District is one of the school systems that has started pushing back its start times in response to the sleep research. Superintendent Daniel Cox said the district now starts all schools at 8:20 a.m. "We can better meet our school district's mission to engage, inspire, and empower our students and staff in order to maximize learning when they are well rested and have an opportunity to eat breakfast before the school day begins," he said.

Instruction Beyond the Regular School Day

The federal data also describe what sort of programs students can participate in before and after regular school hours.

High schools were a little less likely than primary schools to offer extra academic support or advanced enrichment outside regular hours, but middle schools were more likely than either of the others to provide such programs, as the chart at left shows.

Compared to traditional public schools, charter schools were about 6 percentage points more likely to offer extra academic programs for support, and 8 percentage points more likely to offer academic enrichment programs outside the school day. In general, schools with higher concentrations of students in poverty also were more likely to offer extra enrichment or support programs.

The data come from a survey of a nationally representative sample of 8,300 principals of traditional public and charter schools, and 40,000 public school teachers, conducted for the first time in 2015-16 as a redesign of the federal Schools and Staffing Survey.

Categories:

Tags:

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.